Justin.TV Update: The Perils Of LifeCasting

Justin Kan, the star who’s broadcasting his life live on Justin.tv, has received an eviction notice to vacate his Crystal Towers apartment in North Beach, San Francisco from Trinity Management. Why? We don’t know. To make matters worse, people are getting their applications turned down to live in the building simply because they KNOW Justin! We’re not lawyers, but this seems to be highly illegal and against San Francisco rental laws.

What the above quote from the sympathetic site creator doesn’t mention are Justin.tv’s frequent apartment gatherings/parties (broadcast live to thousands). It might look like fun if you’re watching it on the Internet, but if you’re Justin’s neighbor, it probably isn’t a picnic being so close to lifecasting ground zero.

To other would-be lifecasters, this kind of thing should be no surprise. While every landlord has a different contract and legal stance, generally real estate owners frown on residents using their homes as commercial television studios. This stretches the notion of the home office into the limits of fair use.